Storyteller, researcher, journalist, and writer.

I’ve been a staff reporter for the Texas Observer for four years. Before this, my freelance reporting on education, politics, labor, and immigration, and has also appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, Salon, Daily Beast, Truthout, and other outlets. I previously worked as an educator and community organizer. I hold a bachelor’s degree in American History from Columbia University, and a master’s degree in English and Education from Brooklyn College. I was raised in and live in Houston.

For a complete resume, click here.

The Texas Observer

The Death Toll: An Expensive Tollway’s High Cost in Human Lives

Texas’ Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded in Secrecy

USPS is Falsifying Safety Docs As Its Workers Die of Heat

Texas Already Gives Public Ed Dollars to Private Operators. Here’s How That Worked Out

The New Children’s Crusade: Recruiting for America’s Culture War

Students Pay as Texas School Districts Violate ‘Threat Assessment Law’

Prosecutors Won’t Drop Charges Against Brownsville ISD Honor Student

The Nation

The USPS Is Falsifying Safety Documents as Its Workers Die of Heat

The Texas Observer

Texas Already Gives Public Ed Dollars to Private Operators. Here’s How That Worked Out.

Students Pay as Texas School Districts Violate ‘Threat Assessment Law’

Prosecutors Won’t Drop Charges Against Brownsville ISD Honor StudentTexas Taxpayers Will Fund Dozens of Private Schools That Openly Discriminate

Jim Crow Still Lingers in Bonham, Civil Rights Lawyers Say

This 11-Year-Old Brownsville ISD Honor Student Was Put in Solitary

How Voucher Vendors Could Make Millions from ‘School Choice’ in Texas

Pawns in the Voucher Scheme

A Wave of School District Takeovers Could be Coming. Some Past Interventions Ended with More Failing Schools.

Texas School Districts Slam the Senate’s School Finance Plan

A White School Officer Pepper-Sprayed and Kneed a Black Beaumont Student Complaint Says. Will Feds Act?

Abbott Appointee Slams Brakes on American Indian/ Native Studies Course

Houston ISD Takeover, The Musical

Abbott Wants to Deny Undocumented Kids a Public Education

Salon

At one Texas school, LGBTQ teens call onslaught of hostile laws ‘matter of life and death’

Texas Observer

The Death Toll: An Expensive Tollway’s High Cost in Human Lives

USPS Is Falsifying Safety Docs As Its Workers Die of Heat

Texas’ Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded in Secrecy

Veterans Who Work in Texas VA Health System: ‘The Dam’s Gonna Break’

Will Texas Workers Ever Get a Break from the Summer Heat?

Texas Domestic Workers Face Trump Attach on Minimum Wage

Texas Workers, Congressman Launch ‘Thirst Strike’ for Heat Protections

At the Texas AFL-CIO, a Changing Guard in a A Time of Growth

The American Prospect

An End to the Endless Workweek

Daily Beast

How Reagan Started a Workers’ Civil War and How Biden Can Finally End It

Texas Observer

After Hurricane Beryl, Cooling Centers Were Few and Slow to Arrive for Houstonians of Color- Some Died of Heat Exposure

The New Children’s Crusade: Recruiting for America’s Culture War

West Texas Congressman’s ‘Big Beautiful’ Cuts Could Harm Rural Hospitals in His District

Texas is Taking Back the State Highway 288 Tollway- At a Steep Price

Those Who Don’t Know the Past…

‘TXDOT’s Still Bulldozing Over Our Communities

Distillers Want to Decriminalize Making Booze at Home

Houston Underdogs Beat Established Democrats in House, Senate Runoffs

Texas Observer

Texas’ Hotbed of Taiwanese Nationalism

A Reporter’s Religious Quest in Houston Suburbia

The Winds of Willacy: Inside Texas’ Largest Wind Farm

These Librarians Won’t Let America’s Fever Hit Fahrenheit 451

Not Your Everyday Snow Cone

‘American Born Chinese’ and the Limits of Cultural Representation

The Hill Country’s Lost Utopia

‘The Hobby’: A Love Letter to Board Gamers Like My Son

A Border Crossing with the Devil

Texas Standard: January 20, 2026: Texas taxpayers will fund dozens of private schools that openly discriminate

WNHNFM Radio, Arnie Arnesen Attitude: January 16, 2026: Private Schools Receiving Vouchers Openly Discriminate

El Pochcast Podcast, March 6, 2024: A Follow-Up on An 11-Year-Old Boy in Solitary

KXAN TV, February 16, 2024: Texas Observer: Judge dismisses charges against Brownsville ISD student

Houston Public Media Radio, December 11, 2023: A new investigative report from The Texas Observer examines the high human and economic cost of constructing the 288 toll road

Houston Public Media Radio, May 10, 2023: After the school shooting in Santa Fe, a state law requires schools to utilize threat assessment protocols that include mental health interventions for troubled students. But a Texas Observer investigation finds most districts aren’t complying with it

WNHNFM Radio, Arnie Arnesen Attitude, May 3, 2023: The defunding of public schools in Texas

WNYC Radio, The Takeaway, March 30, 2023: Behind the Texas State Takeover of Houston Independent School District

We’ve Got Issues Podcast, March 18, 2023: Violent right-wing ’groomers’ are weaponizing young Americans

WNHNFM Radio, Arnie Arnesen Attitude, March 9, 2023: Governor Abbott’s proposal to deny school to undocumented children and Turning Point USA’s ‘children’s crusade”

Member, Investigative Reporters and Editors

Member, Asian American Journalists Association

josephineklee@gmail.com

(347) 661-2665